A wise president puts into effect policies that work.
A smart president sees his policies aren’t working and changes them.
An Egyptian president says the Israelis ate my homework
This American president says that the Japanese earthquake ate my economy
–Barry Rubin, The Article You’re Reading Right Now
Recently, the Egyptian minister of agriculture blamed the fact that some exported food products were infected with bacteria and killed almost 50 European consumers on an Israeli plot. The deputy prime minister explained that Muslim-Christian strife in Egypt (i.e, Muslim extremists attacking Christians) is fomented by Israel. Internal conflict is generally blamed on the triumvirate of Israel, America, and Saudi Arabia.
But if the minister of agriculture spoke about bad quality control, perhaps the problem could be fixed. If the deputy prime minister criticized Islamic and Islamist incitement, the violence might be halted. No such luck.
Conspiracy theories and scapegoating are central to the Arabic-speaking world’s debates. But there are many lessons for the West from that malady. Unfortunately, the wrong lesson has been drawn: Let’s copy them!
Most obviously, dictatorial regimes use scapegoating to turn their people’s enmity toward others and create dependence on themselves. Radical movements also use scapegoating and conspiracy theories to muster mass support.
But there’s another important factor that gets less attention: If external saboteurs are responsible for a problem, nothing has to be done to fix it. In other words, all you have to do is wipe the offenders’ country off the map and the problem would go away. You don’t need to improve agricultural inspections or to teach Egyptian Muslims to respect Christians; you just have to make a speech denouncing the “real enemy.”
Twenty or thirty years ago, most would have said that this kind of behavior would go away as enlightenment and education spread. But it has gotten worse, spread more than ever to the West, and is now being extended by “education” in the form of school indoctrination.
Years ago, the literature on analyzing the problems of the modern Third World focused on development studies. The question was how a country needed to change in order to become advanced, democratic, and enjoy high living standards. Various specific remedies were prescribed: more education, import-substitution, fostering free enterprise, government-backed infrastructure projects, and so on. In short, action and changing attitudes were required to achieve success.
Then along came various Marxists, radical nationalists, and political con men (Barack Obama’s father was one of them) who argued that underdevelopment wasn’t a malady based on long history, social backwardness, and bad policies but rather was a crime perpetrated by the West. In this vision, what was needed was to confiscate domestic wealth from private hands and — even more important — battle the evil West’s exploitation. One solution was a form of global welfarism, endless payments from the West to make up for its imperialism. New crimes were also invented (global warming—whether or not that is a real phenomenon it is ridiculous to make it the basis for transfer payments) to demand reparations.
Literally millions of people have died or suffered because they were run over while going down this wrong road. Note that the countries that have done the best in recent years — India, China, South Korea, for example — threw this scapegoating notion into the garbage basket. Those that continue to whine rather than work to fix their problems are becoming basket cases
I’ve been told directly by an Arab friend who had been to China the following story that he claims is true:
Arab visitor: “How do you Chinese deal with the fact that you suffered so much from foreign invasion and imperialism?”
Chinese official: “We got over it.”
Israel’s Bureau of Statistics reported recently that Israeli cows produced an average of 10.2 kg. of milk in 2009, outperforming cows in the U.S. (9.3 kg. per cow), Japan (7.5), the EU (6.1) and Australia (5,6).
So the equivalent of what’s happening in the understanding of underdevelopment would be if the EU leaders complained that Israel and the United States were sabotaging their cows rather than deciding to study the methods used by these countries, improving their own practices, or even buying some of the — if you’ll excuse the expression — cash cows for themselves.
But there’s more: conspiracy theories have conquered large parts of the West in another way. The key word here is “racism,” though there are others like “Islamophobia.” Rather than analyze the actual cause of issues, these conspiracy theories are being tossed around.
Well said !
It’s almost as if the ‘blame everyone but me’ tribes on the planet are stumbling in the darkness and have run out of convincing arguments to defend their twisted ways as they run away from reality and any light of truth that remains.
I think it’s really easy to sum all of it up for everyone to understand.
Years ago I visited the Jewish village of Tekoa and their high tech,advance mushroom production facility which had expanded to Africa and India so I was told.
What struck me on this visit as I looked across the was was the old Arab village of Tekoa which had not changed much in 2,000 years,still as primitive and backwards as ever.
This along with so many points you made here always takes me back to the Word’s of Israel’s God to papa Abraham.
“And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
Genesis 12:3
You can see it everywhere.
The Arab/Muslims because of their hatred for Israel and the Jews are a cursed people.
I can see the UK with it’s unbridled bias and anti-semetism and London burning cursed as I saw with the tranquil fabric of Norwegian society now cursed with uncertainty and fear.
And then off to once great America now sinking under an incompetent fool to lead them because in their arrogance they chose to steal land from the Jews and give it to the greedy Arabs who don’t want Jews to have anything.
The words of God are solid and true,you can bank on them unlike the now cursed American dollar.
The curse grows and the earth sinks deeper into the abyss because they did not heed the simple warning of Genesis 12:3
The first 4 lines of this piece were definitely good for a chuckle!
From a sign I saw in Israel:
A man may fail many times but he is not a failure until he starts blaming someone else.
That being the case Obama has been a failure since day one he either blames Bush or the Tea Party or Republicans or really anything other then the real culprit which is HIM!
The absolute worst man to ever hold the office of president now in 2012 fix it and vote him along with as many senators that are democrats as possible!
Wise men, Barry Rubin and all the bloggers to the point of this writing.
Brilliant piece of writing. You’re my hero.
“But if the minister of agriculture spoke about bad quality control, perhaps the problem could be fixed. If the deputy prime minister criticized Islamic and Islamist incitement, the violence might be halted. No such luck.”
More likely, they would be discharged for criticizing the policies of their own bosses. (Exactly who is in charge in Egypt right now, anyway? Or is anybody?)
That is, assuming they weren’t simply murdered for “insulting Islam”.
One reason that even intelligent people in tribalist cultures are more likely to blame “enemies” for those cultures’ shortcomings is an understandable fear of being killed for the “crime” of speaking the truth. This is why there are so many like the Egyptian agriculture minister, and so few like Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
I also find it interesting that Western “progressives”, wrapped up in their own war against the culture they hate (ours), are far more likely to support the likes of the Egyptian minister than they are Ms. Ali. To them, “speaking truth to power” is only a virtue if they don’t approve of the “power”.
clear ether
eon
Good point eon. I’ve read Ms. Ali’s book Infidel and am amazed when leftists label her, and other women like Brigitte Gabriel, Wafa Sultan and Pam Geller as Islamophobes. These are women who draw upon lifetimes of personal experience. No credible female Muslim counterparts have emerged to refute their claims….. yet they are reviled as bigots by the leftist, feminist, socialists among us. Who are the real bigots here?
A delegation from AMPAS training the Iranian regime in media propaganda techniques 6 months before their “election”?
Democratic support for the overthrowing of Musharraf and Mubarak?
Hilary Clinton praising Turkey for changing their constitution, overturning the century-old legacy of Mustafa Kemal(Ataturk) and finally allowing them to vote for Islamic theocracy? She called it “greater freedom to vote”.
Wake up, people! The left will support Islamic extremists AGAINST moderate Muslims because they serve no purpose in the war against Christians and Jews.
I’m an atheist. Religion is not my business. People with genocidal intent certainly are, though. Do remember that half of the Democratic party thinks the maximum sustainable population of the Earth is 2.5 billion people. If they had control of our police and military you would already be experiencing state violence. You would be in jails or graves, found guilty of “crimes against the enviroment”(AKA counterrevolutionary activities).
It isn’t just that failed third-world leaders (including Obama pere et fils) blame others for their own failings and that of their countrymen. It is that they actively persecute anybody who is actually productive. That’s why companies and jobs are leaving the US.
Rubin is also ignoring the real elephant in the room – Islam.
Islam is not a religion in the usual sense, but an expansionist, enemy, totalitarian political ideology that seeks to eliminate everything outside of itself. There is no room in Islam for the type of critical thinking, innovation, freedom, and entrepreneurship that would allow a country to develop a modern economy. But because Islam is inherently not susceptible to reform, the only alternative is to blame others for the inevitable failures of every predominantly Islamic country.
And then there is the fact that Obama supports the agenda of Islamic expansionism every chance he gets.
I’m curious why cows’ milk is measured in kg not liters. Is it because some milk is thicker than other? I imagine Israel, with limited land base, has to maximize milk output per cow, but in North America and I suspect elsewhere, industrial agriculture aims not to maximize output per hectare, but to produce in a way that maximizes return on investment which often takes advantage of land being relatively cheap.
Barack Obama has been excusing his failures by blaming others since he was a child, that is why he is so adept at it.
…when a country is unable to discuss its problems honestly and intelligently, it is unable to fix its problems.
Precisely why the US has so far been unable to ‘defeat’ the threat of Islam. The inability or unwillingness to confront the reality of the enemy will lead to defeat. This defect in our current and recent past confrontation with Islam and Islams war against we unbelievers will be our ultimate downfall. A little over 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson confronted Islamic aggression, founded the Marine core and defeated the then ascendant threat. Liberals / Progressives choose to remember him for being a slaveholder and yet never mention the fact that slavery is still practiced in many Islamic countries and only abolished officially in Saudi Arabia as recently as 1962.
For all those wishing to live in the United States of America our repeated call should be for assimilation. Those not wishing to live according to our constitution, learn our language (yes, English / Americanese), obey our laws rather than import laws from other societies, are welcome to find their own ‘paradise’.
There is no such thing as utopia as envisioned by the ‘enlightened’ progressive / liberal cabal. Humans are imperfect and so are societies that they create and only through trial and error, failure and triumph and most of all Freedom to live a just and honorable life will we as humans truly find happiness.
Coeurmaeghan in 29 Palms, CA
Muslim countries like Iran are the ones that really make me laugh. If the United States and Israel disappeared tomorrow, they would still need somebody to blame for their stupidity, inefficiency, superstition, and medieval beliefs. If America and Israel were not there, then they would blame the “evil” Europeans. No Europeans? Then it would be the Indians. No Indians? Then it would have to be the Russians. There is always, always, somebody else to blame for their country’s problems, but never, ever, themselves. What a pathetic lot they are. The only pity is that their citizens believe them, more or less. But there may be hope. The Iranian people want change and 30 years of a theocracy has made them open their eyes as to how bad a government can be run. The trick, though, is now trying to overthrow these madmen. Yes, that’s the trouble with countries like this. It’s easy to take power, but very hard for the people to get it back once they lose it. And I’m not sure they can.
The Arabs could have had their own country and a viable government had they taken advantage of it when the UN offered it at the same time of offering the Jews land. The Jews took their small piece of land and made a productive oasis of it and the Arabs squatted on theirs and did nothing except try to take the Jews’ land from them.
Now it’s all the “poor Palestinians” because they have nothing and damn the Israelis because they won’t all drop dead on cue.
They want the Jews (Israelis)dead and have practically since the beginning of time. Way before their Koran was written.
Frankly, as an aside, I believe the Left in this country is trying to do to the Tea Party what the “Palestinians” are doing to the Israelis, only with word missiles instead of missiles with warheads.
“Israel’s Bureau of Statistics reported recently that Israeli cows produced an average of 10.2 kg. of milk in 2009, outperforming cows in the U.S. (9.3 kg. per cow), Japan (7.5), the EU (6.1) and Australia (5,6).”
This may be due to maximizing quantity at the expense of quality.
I was shocked after I bought from Israel (Tnuva) which was pale as a ghost. Whiter than Harvard class of 1950.
US butter is yellow, the free range stuff almost orange. White butter means the milk lacks vitamin A (which is also what makes carrots orange).
Is any Israeli milk production free range? There should be room in Golan, no?
Do you think the added vitamins in the Bamba make up for the lack of vitamin A in the dairy products?
Dear Prof. Rubin, How often I have appreciated your enormous depth of scholarship on Middle East history and policy, but you plainly are out of your depth entirely trying to analyze the USA from a distance of 7,000 miles. Suddenly, you sound as if you’d swallowed Fox News whole!
One hardly knows where to begin. One small example: immigration. Like the Teas, you want to bash President Obama with “what is in practice unlimited immigration”? Surely, you meant under his predecessor, who was happy to make high profile busts of immigrants, so long as they were replaced within the next workshift. Under Obama, illegal immigration is down steeply to the lowest levels in years, to the point that many who have long lived in the US have actually headed back to Mexico. It can’t all be explained by the down economy. It’s because Obama took the only obvious effective step, imposing stiff fines and even criminal prosecutions on employers.
One might also wonder at what you’ve left out in your jeremiad against foreign aid to ungrateful dependents. Foreign aid is a small fraction of the US budget, but 30 percent of that foreign aid total goes to Israel. 75 percent of military foreign aid goes to Israel. (Yes, most of that comes right back to American corporations as payments to Lockheed Martin et al, but some taxpayers still have to pay for that stuff!)
So what exactly is your point? Do you intend that President Obama should cut the aid?
People don’t mock the Tea-publican party because they are “demonizing” it. Rather, it is because leading Republican presidential candidates like Michele Bachmann so regularly DO say crazy things. Just today she suggested that Hurricane Irene was a message from God. It wasn’t a Democrat who suggested that Republicans are risking becoming the “anti-science” party. It was Bachmann’s fellow candidate Republican Jon Huntsman. And if PajamasMedia has any say, Huntsman will now pay a heavy price for truth-telling in politics.
And really, it’s a little embarrassing when a learned man takes a swipe at “college professors” as if they were a monolith of liberalism. Forget to mention your own PhD?
In short, we get that you don’t like President Obama’s policies in the Middle East. That’s your prerogative. Many Pajamas Media readers will applaud you on that score. But you clearly don’t get the USA. So don’t make yourself ridiculous by attempting to explain us to ourselves.
At last, a pro-Obama propaganda piece. A few small problems. One is that all of the pro-Obama items are false. It is in all of the materials one can find out there. You simply CANNOT make things that are absolutely failures into successes. Liberals try that all the time; it makes one cringe when listening to them, yes, even on the Fox News channels. I really feel sorry for them.
Two is that Obama is quoted all by himself making arguments that are hateful to Americans that are of a different viewpoint than his: Example—Cap&Trade will of necessity cause electricity costs to skyrocket. That list goes on and on. And you cannot cover that up; it is all in his own words. Ever listen to his henchwoman, Pelosi? If you believe she makes anything but nonsense, you are looking at everything through the wrong end of the political telescope.
Three is blaming everyone but himself. It is so sickening that it is impossible to view. And regulatory war against business, oye vey! Then there is the making of illegal imigrants into legal ones via presidential order. It will have to be reversed in future election cycles.
Do you think there was nothing to the Nov. 2010 election that took an entire congressional house away from these progressives? Those of us who can still do something about America via electoral process look forward to 2012.
No, there is lots of evil in BHO&CO. Something unlike anything that has ever happened here since George Washington. We will prevail.
I fully accept your article but please do some homework!
Israel’s Bureau of Statistics reported recently that Israeli cows produced an average of 10.2 kg. of milk in 2009, outperforming cows in the U.S. (9.3 kg. per cow), Japan (7.5), the EU (6.1) and Australia (5,6).
>> What size are these mini-mini-mini cows? If they would produce this in one day, I would still say, goat-cows
Your publication policy says no ad hominem attacks. You write “The issue is not whether the target being demonized is right or wrong or makes mistakes but the fact that the mass or mainstream or elite audience has no idea at all what they are actually saying.” Then you make an underhanded ad hominem attack at the president by associating his estranged father with Marx. You should follow your own admonitions.